


Lightning Bug

by LaFlashdrive



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-24 22:22:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2598617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaFlashdrive/pseuds/LaFlashdrive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura doesn’t feel bad about keeping Carmilla tied up. Not until night time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lightning Bug

It doesn’t seem as bad, as criminal, as inhumane during the day. That’s when Carmilla sleeps anyway. She isn’t missing out on anything. Her teachers aren’t wondering where she is. Her study buddies don’t really care. And Carmilla doesn’t either, seemingly, at least not enough to talk.

At night, though, Laura feels like she’s keeping an innocent creature held captive. Carmilla is a lightning bug caught in a jar, and when there’s tape over her mouth, there aren’t even air holes for her to breathe out of. With each passing day, Laura is afraid she is suffocating her.

At nighttime when Laura shuts down her computer and prepares to crawl into bed, she sees something in Carmilla’s eyes that take her back to childhood trips at the zoo. “Are the animals happy in their cages, Daddy?” she’d asked her father, and her father had lied to her for his own sake and hers.

“They sure are,” he said, with no real basis of fact. “When they’re in cages, they can’t hurt people,” he proclaimed proudly. “Keeping them locked up keeps you safe. You won’t want that tiger out here on the pathway would you?”

Laura thought about what would happen if the tigers were free. It could be scary, she agreed, but part of her also wanted to pet them. It was the part of her that wanted to throw away her bear spray, too. She wasn’t going to invade a bear sanctuary, and even if she was she wouldn’t have the heart to hurt those creatures anyway. They were just protecting their territory. That’s what Carmilla was doing, too. Protecting herself. Protecting Laura. Protecting her lifestyle. And that lifestyle wasn’t just feeding on the blood of the innocent or turning coeds into pod people. It was roaming the night, feeling free beneath the stars, and Laura had been denying Carmilla that joy for over a week now.

She couldn’t just let her go, though. Carmilla had to talk. She had to explain what she was doing with those girls and had to promise she wouldn’t try to get revenge, wouldn’t break Will’s collarbone again or punch Danny in her other eye. Laura couldn’t risk it right now. Even if she was iffy about her own safety, she couldn’t endanger that of her friends. She still felt bad, though, about the garlic necklace and the thick ropes snaked around her hostage’s midriff, covering the skin left exposed by her corset, so she came to a compromise that would keep Carmilla locked in their room, but give her, at least, a chance to look at the stars.

Of course, Laura tried to camouflage her motivations the way Carmilla disguised herself in the night, dressing in all black and creeping amongst the shadows. When Laura moved Carmilla from the center of the room, strenuously pushing the weight of the other girl combined with the weight of the old wooden chair, to the front of the room and next to the window, she claimed her reasoning for suffering through the effort was to put distance between her and Carmilla, keep Carmilla away from her as she slept, keep Carmilla from watching her as she slept. But in reality, Laura didn’t much think she’d mind that last bit, and ultimately she was putting Carmilla away for safekeeping for the girl’s own benefit.  
Laura would come out of the bathroom (She always changed in the bathroom now. She couldn’t change in the room like Carmilla did. Not only was Laura naturally more self-conscious than her alluring, empowered roommate, the situation was too odd for Laura now that Carmilla had admitted her feelings of attraction and infatuation, and Laura couldn’t bring herself to get half-naked in front of her hostage anymore. She couldn’t withstand Carmilla’s staring eyes, lustful, intimidating, intense, hungry even when Carmilla was tied up and Laura knew she couldn’t do anything to her, whether that be eating her or eating her.) wearing her signature flannel and pajamas and she would move Carmilla then, placing her beside the window with the chair’s back toward Laura’s bed and Carmilla’s craned neck up towards the curtains and the glass and the sky and the stars.

Right before Laura walked away, Carmilla would turn to her, give her one last silent, powerful look for the night that almost, if Laura tried hard enough to search for the meaning somewhere underneath that scowl, said thank you.

It wasn’t like Laura just left her there, though. That would be as heartless as she accused Carmilla of being. She had to do a little more than just let Carmilla look at her world through translucent panes of crystal, even if she couldn’t allow her to do much else, not without untying her and receiving a very stern talking to from a concerned Perry, a supportive Lafontaine, and a very, very angry Danny. So after Laura walked away from Carmilla’s designated nightly spot but before she closed her eyes in her own resting place to sleep, she set her alarm, and she got up before the sun did. Just in case. She wasn’t sure if that whole fear of the sun thing was vampire myth or reality, but Carmilla was already tied up with a face full of garlic. Laura didn’t need any more advantages and she didn’t need to wake up to the smell of Carmilla’s burning flesh, searing even in rays blocked and dulled by the presence of glass between the vampire and the one stellar body she couldn’t appreciate. Just the images of Carmilla’s burnt face and skin in Laura’s mind were more horrifying than any nightmare could ever be, and she slept comparably well that night.

When she woke up in the morning, too early for any normal person, too early even for Carmilla to typically be in bed yet if she wasn’t strapped to a chair, Laura rushed to the window sill and to her brooding captive, whose face was not scorched (although it was a bit paler than its usual pale) she found in relief.

“Are you going to talk today?” she asked, mandatorily, out of obligation. She had to remind Carmilla and herself that there was a reason for this captivity, that she was on a mission, even if sometimes she couldn’t remember what it was.

Carmilla said nothing.

Laura sighed.

“Did you at least like the stars?” Laura asked, softening her voice, reverting to her personal inquiries rather than her group’s.

Carmilla seemed to fair better under those private conditions, isolated and removed from the greater cause of it all. It was almost as if it were any other morning and they were just talking. Except Carmilla’s mouth wasn’t moving. But she nodded her head as if it could. 

_Yes._


End file.
